leagues from Poitiers. The battle was very severe. "The
Goths," says Gregory of Tours, "fought with missiles; the Franks sword in
hand. Clovis met and with his own hand slew Alaric in the fray; at the
moment of striking his blow, two Goths fell suddenly upon Clovis, and
attacked him with their pikes on either side, but he escaped death,
thanks to his cuirass and the agility of his horse."

Beaten and kingless, the Goths retreated in great disorder; and Clovis,
pursuing his march, arrived without opposition at Bordeaux, where he
settled down with his Franks for the winter. When the war season
returned, he marched on Toulouse, the capital of the Visigoths, which he
likewise occupied without resistance, and where he seized a portion of
the treasure of the Visigothic kings. He quitted it to lay siege to
Carcassonne, which had been made by the Romans into the stronghold of
Septimauia.

There his course of conquest was destined to end. After the battle of
Vouille he had sent his eldest son Theodoric in command of a division,
with orders to cross Central Gaul from west to east, to go and join the
Burgundians of Gondebaud, who had promised his assistance, and in
conjunction with them to attack the Visigoths on the banks of the Rhone
and in Narbonness. The young Frank boldly executed his father's orders,
but the intervention of Theodoric the Great, king of Italy, prevented the
success of the operation. He sent an army into Gaul to the aid of his
son-in-law Alaric; and the united Franks and Burgundians failed in their
attacks upon the Visigoths of the Eastern Provinces. Clovis had no idea
of compromising by his obstinacy the conquests already accomplished; he
therefore raised the siege of Carcassonne, returned first to Toulouse,
and then to Bordeaux, took Angouleme, the only town of importance he did
not possess in Aquitania; and feeling reasonably sure that the Visigoths,
who, even with the aid that had cone from Italy, had great difficulty in
defending what remained to them of Southern Gaul, would not come and
dispute with him what he had already conquered, he halted at Tours, and
staid there some time, to enjoy on the very spot the fruits of his
victory and to establish his power in his new possessions.

It appears that even the Britons of Armorica tendered to him at that
time, through the interposition of Melanins, bishop of Rennes, if not
their actual submission, at any rate their subordination and homage.

Clovi